Tequila Makes Your Clothes Come Off
by ultrafreakyfangirl
Summary: He waited up for her like a nervous dad expecting his teenage daughter home from her first date with a boy. He was surprised she even accepted the invite to Tamika's bachelorette party. Those girls would drink her under the table. Or so he'd thought. (Special appearance by drunk Natalie Figueroa). Enjoy :P


**_Author's Note: Hi! I feel like this is turning into a one fic per day thing which means I literally have no friends. Wow. Ouch. :P Anyways, I decided to do more with Joe's perspective, and I also wanted to play around with *drumroll please* drunk Natalie. So, that was fun. It may be aptly titled "Tequila Makes Your Clothes Come Off" Read on to find out for sure. ;) Also, before I forget, this takes place in and around season 7, but before the finale, before they decided to foster Vanessa. _**

* * *

Joe had never seen her like this. She was messy, she was crass (in a place other than their bed) and she was a real fucking _cuddle monster._ It's what his mom used to say about him – when he was about four or five, maybe even till he was about ten years old, except one thing was glaringly obvious, and that was she never, ever, used _fucking _as an adjective. That was his own personal touch.

She was curling her whole body into him like he was a god damn life preserver, and normally, he wouldn't object, although normally, she wouldn't dare show him this much physical affection, physical _other things,_ sure, but never this kind of stuff. The kind of stuff he always wished, in private, he'd get more from her.

His love language was touch, and hers, well hers – if it indeed had a name, would be _sarcastic bitch remarks that were often made at his expense._ Yeah, he'll work on the name. It's a bit longwinded. Suddenly, his phone lit up on the end table with a text message notification. He reached for it, and looked at the screen, confused.

She was right next to him, practically attached to him like a fucking squid, why – he lost his train of thought in reading the message. He could see the whole thing without even unlocking his phone. He had her contact saved as _Nati _with that cheesy red heart that was reserved for teenagers in love and grandmas. And he would die before telling her that. If she found out, she'd never let him hear the end of it. _God,_ she was _dirty _when she was drunk.

"Okay, Nati, we should get you to bed," he said to her, and she grumbled in response, fisting his sweater in her hands. He swore she reverted back into a six-year-old when she was wasted.

"No. I wanna stay up and be with you."

She didn't even object to the moniker tonight, which meant that she no longer had the ability to attend to detail, or just really did not care enough. He wondered which it was.

"Okay, but listen, what if I go to bed _with _you?"

"Mm…" she hummed thoughtfully, or likely just for the sake of humming. "Can we have sex though?"

"Nati…" he sighed, running his hands through her hair that held the stickiness of hairspray in a crazy number of tangles. What had she been doing? Running through a hurricane or something?

"Joe…" she mimicked him. "Don't you Nati me. But hey, can I tell you a secret?"

Her voice was lower now, a hush in the quiet of their living room.

He chuckled. "Go for it."

She sat up now, but still, was touching him, her knees bumping his. "Are you sure?" Her eyes widened dramatically. "It's a really big one."

He chuckled some more. "I'm all ears, Nati Bear."

Okay, now if she didn't have_ some_ reaction to this one, angry, annoyed, or at the very least threaten to pack his shit for him, that meant that the whole scale of drunkenness he once had for her was going to be surpassed, by a thousand.

He's only called her _Nati Bear_ a few times, and most were when she was too delirious to fight back. He'd learned that the hard way. She'd sucker punched him in the chest so hard the first time that he'd seriously thought she'd broken his thoracic cavity or something. Turns out she just severely knocked the wind out of him, but it felt much, much worse in the moment.

After that, he'd stuck to doing it when she was virtually unaware. That one time she was hospitalized because her pneumonia fever spiked so quickly and got so high that he thought she was going to die; when their embryos didn't take on their one and only shot of IVF – this time she was so out of it with grief that it didn't matter what he said to her; and now, when she was so, utterly obliterated, after one, or _one hundred_ too many tequila shots at Tamika's bachelorette party.

"Okay, so, here it is."

He let the silence stretch on for a minute, then two, then three, but it was getting stupid.

"Yes?"

She took a, by all accounts dramatic, deep breath and then waited, still.

"What is it?"

Then she spoke. Although, it wasn't what he had expected, but maybe it should have been.

"I forgot."

"_Oh Jesus,"_ he laughed, fully intent on carrying her like a baby to their bedroom if he had to.

Without telling her what he was doing, he hoisted her into his arms and did just that, careful not to let her head lull too much on the way up the stairs. The ends of her hair kept hitting the walls on the way up, and for some reason this was hilarious to her, as she reached out her arms to touch the wall, to let her fingers glide across it.

"I used to do this in elementary school You know, with metal fences instead. Or – uh- _chain-link._ And it would make this funny sound like wind rushing by, and make my fingers feel all tingly and – _ooh!_ I remember what the secret is!"

"Yeah?" Joe asked, making it up the stairs and into their bedroom. He slowly let her down on the bed. "What's that?"

She smiled at him from where she was laying, her arms and legs sprawled out spread eagle.

"I love you."

He grinned at her and leaned down to place a gentle, three-second kiss to her lips; but then she decided she didn't want to let him go. Gripping the back of his head, her nails practically digging into his scalp – _god damn acrylics_ – she kissed him, hard and deep.

It was an exercise in restraint to break apart from her, but he managed, just barely, his breathing heavy, his heart clamoring in his chest.

"You're drunk. We're not doing this tonight, babe. We can't. I wouldn't feel right about it."

She burst into giggles, repetitive, loud, girlish, squealy giggles. They were disconcerting usually, but even more so when she was fucking half-cut.

"You are _such_ a delicate flower."

Now, he's heard that one before, and _a delicate flower _he may be, but he was also a gentleman. His mom raised him right. _Don't take advantage of girls, Joseph. Don't be like your father._

His _'father' _was nothing more than a pusher and a taker and a fucking criminal who should have been thrown in prison and repeatedly fucked in the ass in there because its what he deserved. In his opinion anyway, he stole from women, their innocence, their informed fucking consent, the rest of their god damn lives, he took from them without a blink of an eye.

He took from his mother, at seventeen, her innocence, her sense of safety, and while he was thankful everyday for her, _to her,_ because he wouldn't be alive today otherwise, the thought of taking advantage of a woman, even if not to the extreme, like that, made him _physically sick._

It was why that Fischer thing had fucked with his head so bad, why he felt it was an absolute need to clear his name, his conscience, because if he was anything, _anything_ resembling that man, he didn't know what he would do with himself.

He'd told Natalie all about it one night, and she just sat with him, held him, and they breathed together, in and out, after he'd apologized for how they started, how he'd in some respects taken from her, too. She was all about assuring him, over and over and over again that what they did was consensual, very much consensual and two-sided, but it had been tough to believe her, at first. _Joseph, you are one of the good ones. I don't believe, and I won't believe, anything else. _

For a second her eyes cleared, and she nodded, nodded at him like she was remembering, like she understood, and then they closed, and little snores emitted from between her slightly parted lips.

He smiled and proceeded to tuck into her side of the bed, and then he followed suit, climbing in next to her, careful not to sleep too close in case she needed her own space, or at some point in the night get up and go to the bathroom.

The next morning he woke up to the loud and low sound of her retching in their ensuite bathroom. Their IVF was only a month ago, and for two, delirious, wonderful seconds he thought – _it worked, she's pregnant._ But of course, when he opened his eyes he knew that wasn't true, unless the baby inside of her, coming up her esophagus, was made of _Jose Cuervo_ and bar peanuts.

He padded barefoot into the bathroom, the tile cold on his feet. He knelt down beside her and swept her hair back from her face, rubbing the middle of her back with the other hand.

"Good morning, Nati Bear. Feeling alright?"

"Ugh," she groaned out in response as she took a break in hurling. "Call me that one more time and see where it gets you."

He heard the hint of a smile in her voice though, the one that her slowly sobering self couldn't hold back, or was too tired to, and the one that her inebriated self, last night, definetly couldn't. She was coming around. He knew she would. Everyone likes to feel special, and he had a feeling, deep down, Natalie Figueroa most of all.

"You liked your tequila last night, huh? Jose wasn't all that good to you though, was he?" Joe chuckled as she retched again.

"Ugh,_ fucking_ Tamika." Her voice echoed from inside the porcelain bowl of the toilet. "Take these shots with me. I'm the bride, you have to do what I say, isn't that the rules?"

"To be fair," he said, kissing the top of her head, "those_ are _the rules. It's her day, after all. Her night, too."

"Ugh, but I'm not twelve anymore. I can't do that shit."

"She's twenty-six."

She sat up, seemingly done getting sick. For now.

"And I'm _fucking old_, Joe. I can't drink like I used to. What the hell was I saying to you last night, anyway? I'm kind of afraid to ask. I'm not in control of tequila. Tequila is in control of me. It's been that way since I was nineteen."

He smiled at her.

"You were fine, babe. Honestly. You blabbered a bit, told me you loved me, and I took you to bed. That's it.

"Oh, and I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but tequila also has some strange powers over you and your clothes. You wanted to have sex, but I told you that you were too drunk. You heckled me a bit, but then you basically passed out halfway through. And now we're here."

She stroked the side of his face, and sighed. She looked regretful.

"Hey, I know that was probably hard for you, because I'm so irresistible."

She winked, but there was still a somber tone to her words.

"But seriously, Joe. I'm sorry. I didn't mean or want to put you in that position."

It had been hard, after he opened up to her about his, well, his _circumstances,_ soon after the whole Fischer thing blew over, like she said it would. In her own way she was softer with him, listened to him more when he said he didn't feel comfortable with certain things. It was a change, especially from where they'd started, but he appreciated it.

He kissed her softly on the head, then once on the lips. She embodied the stale taste of vomit and a subtle sweat.

"I know. I know you didn't."

She sighed, putting her hand on his knee.

"I love you. So much. And I just – "

She put her head there now.

"There are times I wish I knew sooner. Of course, you didn't know me well enough or trust me enough to say anything back then, or even when things were tentative between us. But we were so rough – _are_ so rough, still, that I sometimes wonder – "

"Nat, hey, _no_." He raised his knee slightly so she would look at him. She did. There was turmoil in her gaze.

"If something was a trigger for me, or something made me feel _wrong,_ I would have said. And I still would. It doesn't come up often, and I can never predict it, but don't think for one second that I would let you, let us, do something that made me, or either of us, feel uncomfortable. We're not like that, you and me. We may be play rough, but it's mutual and all in the sport of pleasure."

She smiled softly at him, seemingly placated. She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Okay."

He smiled too. "Okay?"

He helped her up off of the floor and she accepted, and when they were both standing again, she nodded. "Yeah."

He brought her in for a hug and just held her, and he felt her holding him, tight, but loose at the same time. He kissed her temple.

"I love you, Nati Bear."

She grouched in response as she pulled away from him, but let their foreheads rest together.

"What did I say about calling me that?"

"Shut up," he smiled. "You love it."

"Bleh," she responded. "I_ will_ punch you."

He leaned over and whispered into her ear. "No you wouldn't."

She whispered now, too. "No I wouldn't." Then she took his earlobe in between her teeth, soft, gentle. "But maybe I'll bite."

He backed up against the wall and she caught on when he playfully tapped her ass, letting him hold her so that she could straddle him. He started to suck on her neck, stopping for a second to say something with an accent of seduction.

"And I'd be more than okay with that."

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**_Author's Note: I couldn't tell you what made me give Joe the backstory I did. He just seems so sweet and nurturing and very conscious of his actions, especially later on in the series, and he reacted to strongly to the Fischer thing and being accused and I wanted to explore that. So, yeah. Anyway, as always, let me know what you thought of this fic and like I said, reviews feed my writer brain. _**

**_And side note, if anyone who reads these also read my Nichorello fics – I know, I see you, and I did want to go back to those two but with the way Lorna's character was angled those last few episodes, I just haven't been sure how to go about it. The writers basically slashed Nichorello and nothing seems plausible for them right now in my mind. That's not to say I won't ever write for them again, but it is to say that I don't know when that will be. So, be patient. _**


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